Catholic

December 14, 1985|By Compiled from Sentinel services by John Gholdston.

CHURCH GROWTH. Roman Catholics now total 841 million in the world, according to the latest church estimates, up from 783.7 million in 1980. Included are an estimated 16 million Catholics in countries where church leaders cannot report figures, mostly communist areas. The total, given in the newly published Statistical Yearbook of the Church, amounts to 18 percent of the world's population. As previously, Latin America was the region with the largest Catholic population -- 345.5 million -- amounting to 41 percent of the world's Catholics.